C&C4 is notoriously hard to troubleshoot as it tends to crash randomly and just plain not work without any apparent reason or obvious fix.
Try this:
Check that your .NET is up to date. You can check this through Windows Update.
If that doesn't work you can see if this works for you:
I was able to discover that the CNC4LauncherUpdate.exe file is something that is being dynamically being created when the CNC4.exe file is launched/executed.
I discovered this when I initially attempted to move the file from it's location \AppsData\Local\Temp as I was theorizing that the file was corrupted. When I started CnC4, the file got recreated.
Which explained two things:
a. Why the file was in the AppsData\Local\TEMP folder (if it was being dynamically created in the CnC4 Program Folder, Win7 sometimes has this habit of confirming if you would like to create a file/folder if it was created under "Program Files")
b. Why the error message states that it was incompatible. It was not really incompatible, but rather, it was a CORRUPTED executable file, which upon an attempted execution, Windows detects as an "incompatible executable" file to the current version. Additional proof was that the Error/Debug Windows stating "Unsupported 16-bit Application", and at the same time "Check your system whether you need a x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) version of the program". It was incompatible either as a 16-bit, 32-bit, or 64-bit version simply because = it's corrupted.
Which led me to theorize that this file corruption can be caused by 2 things:
a. A process was preventing the (timely?) transfer of data from... wherever...
b. A process was preventing the proper "writing" of this data, to the file "CnC4LauncherUpdate.exe"
So, to mitigate the 2 situations above, I did the following:
a. In my firewall/proxy/web caching/web scanning programs, I allowed the following files unlimited access to anywhere:
---a.1. CNC4.exe
---a.2. EADM.exe
---a.3. CnC4LauncherUpdate.exe
b. In my proxy/firewall/web scanner programs, I excluded the EA.COM website from being filtered/scanned/cached
c. In my file scanners (virus/trojan/shadowcopy/etc), I excluded the following folders/files from being touched/scanned
---c.1. CnC4 Program Folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\Command & Conquer 4 Tiberian Twilight)
---c.2. EA Download Manager Program Folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\EADM)
---c.3. CnC4LauncherUpdate.exe specifically
d. I manually forced FULL security permissions to Administrator + my User Account to the C:\Users\(My username)\AppData\Local\Temp
After doing the above steps, I ran the game, and it worked without any issues (well, except for the mouse cursor going invisible, which was easily fixed by disabling mouse pointer trails - but this is another issue altogether).
Past this, can you check your Reliability monitor for any reports in relation to the crash?
To do so, open the search box and type: reliability monitor
Look for a red x that matches the C&C4 crash and post up the details of the report.
